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Wednesday, December 31, 2014

Antique marbles are like any other area of
collecting—there are quite a few different varieties that you can find and
collect. They also have some interesting
pattern names that you will quickly hear about when you dive into collecting
(or selling) these items.

The handmade items that are made from the late 1800’s
into the early 1900’s are the ones that are sought out by collectors, which are
when these patterns featured here are from.

The first pattern is called a “Sulphide.” This one is a glass marble that has a chalk
item in the center. There have been
several found with both crystal and colored glass. The chalk piece runs a wide swath that covers
figural (more often than not animals, but human figures have been found),
numbers, and even floral motifs.

The next thing that you will see is a marble called a “ribbon
core.” These have a couple of different
variations in this pattern. There are
latticino cores and Lutz cores to name just two of them.

*photo courtesy of wiki-collecting.com

Latticino core marbles have a lattice work type of center
and ribbons of colored glass around this core.
Lutz cores have a solid ribbon at the center, with gold flakes embedded
within. Both types of marbles come in a
wide range of colors both on the core and on the outer glass part as well.

The next marble that you will see is called a clay
marble. This type of marble is common (also
known as a “commie”), and can be found with a wide variety of glazes. Clay marbles really started to take off here
in America in 1884 when The Akron Toy Company started
to produce them (before then they were imported from Germany).

There’s
quite a few different more antique marbles out there to be found. What kinds have you run across?